Defense commissaries: Goodbye, pink slime

Pink slime may be ok by the USDA and the American Meat Institute. But not with commissary customers. So the Defense Commissary Agency has announced it will no longer sell beef products that contain the stuff as of the end of May.

“Although the USDA continues to assure us this process is safe, we have listened to our customers and modified our contracts to require that our ground beef suppliers only sell us products not treated with the LFTB [lean, finely-textured beef] process,” said Chris Burns, the Defense Commissary Agency director of sales at DeCA Headquarters in Fort Lee, Va.

Commissary shoppers who don’t mind buying “treated” meat or who need to because the treated meat is less expensive will be able to do so until the end of the month. Those who do mind can buy USDA organic ground beef or USDA all-natural ground beef, neither of which has pink slime.

One commenter on the Air Force web post called the decision misplaced.

“This seems a knee jerk reaction,” wrote Bill Brockman of Atlanta, Ga. “Hundreds of hard working folks at processing plants have already lost their jobs over this overblown scandal. Why not just label stuff and let the consumers decide?